Series
Time
With the use of numbers came the principal turning point in human
history, which divides archaic thinking from scientific thinking. The
series Scales of Time is oriented on the process of making an analogue
occurrence such as time undergo a digital division, making it describable
by numbers and therefore divisible, countable, comparable and thus
calculable. The process is the basis and origin of all of the sciences. With
my scale pictures, I have attempted to make this decisive process –
perhaps the most decisive process of all for human history – accessible to
the world of pictures. I have published time scales which transcend the
pictorial field as reliefs and as graphic prints.
A scale is a serially constructed graphic element that consists of repetitive
dividing lines. On the underlying surface on which the scale is situated
due to its intended use, beginning and end lines usually mark it as a
graphic unit. However, if the dividing lines are arranged on the corre-
sponding underlying surface in a way giving the impression that the
surface is only a segment of a larger entity, the fiction is created that the
scale emerges from endless time and is continuing on into endlessness.
Here the beholder completes a part of the artistic work by placing the
pictorial content perceived in his mind outside of the pictorial field. As
time progresses, time scales serve as custodians for the passage from
being to non-being. Therein lies their unique poetry.
Impulse forms, like the time scales, characterise a recurring course of
events. However, they differ from time scales in that they make a qualita-
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Time Scale 2,
ZS 002
6 -
Time Scale 4,
ZS 004
7 -
Time Scale 3,
ZS 003
In July 2001, my Time Tunnel III was rendered in dark bronze by the art
foundry Noack in Berlin, cast with loving care by master hand. The intel-
lectual background of the time tunnel is comprised of old customs
accompanied by faith, e.g. the Jewish custom to put small slips of paper
in the crevices of theWailingWall with prayers, thoughts, justifications or
even messages for those no longer living among us. Tibetan prayer
banners also led me to the conception of the form of the time tunnel.
These cult objects, called dar-chog in the Tibetan language and made out
of white or multi-coloured print fabric, are to be found at prominent
crossroads, on mountain peaks and roofs of houses and trees in Tibet.
Even in the bleakness of the barren mountain landscape, poles have been
hammered into the ground on which prayer banners have been fastened.
The banners have prayers written or printed on them. In the Tibetans’
imagination, these prayers will be carried away with the wind into eter-
nity, away to the gods. In my imagination the continuum time is moving
through my time tunnel and onward. A piece of paper inserted in one of
the elongated slots contains my entreaty for the fulfilment of the funda-
mental concerns of humanity, in encrypted graphic form: victory over
hunger, victory over fanaticism and the right to be heard and the right of
dissenters to express their opinion in a non-violent way. My supplica-
tions will be carried away by time, into the cathedral of eternity, the space
in which time no longer progresses, but where the treasured thoughts of
humanity may repose and continue to have effect in intense silence.
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